relief

The weakness in this approach is that the people whose needs are greatest are typically seriously underrepresented in the halls of economic and political power. (Why do you think their needs are greatest?) Still, this is vastly better than some top-down approach in which the bright boys who brought on the crisis pretend to solve it.Via opednews

Bottom-Up Stimulus

by Yossef Ben-Meir

What development projects deliver short-term relief to people and long-term economic structural change for sustained growth and should therefore be part of the upcoming economic stimulus package? The answer: projects determined and managed by the local communities they are intended to benefit.

Depending on life conditions and challenges rural and urban communities face and the ideas they have for local development, projects communities typically prioritize to implement include roads, schools, clinics, community centers, daycare, and cooperatives. They are in private sector development, pubic health, green initiatives, training, and empowering people. They are in agriculture, manufacturing, and human services and development.

Continue reading Bottom-Up Stimulus

There was a congressman, during the depression, who argued that the government should spend the money required for economic recovery regardless of the fact that the experts said “there’s no money.” He said, rightly, that if there were a war, they find the money somewhere. And of course, that’s just what happened.
I’ve been thinking about that.
You and I just saw the government create $750 billion basically out of thin air, in order to assure that the banking system would survive, or in order to restore liquidity to international markets, or to avoid another Great Depression, or to pay off political allies, or to continue the ongoing looting of the American economy that has been rolling merrily along since Ronald Reagan. Choose one or more answers.
For whatever reason, when the government decided it needed an additional $750 billion for reasons that seem sufficient to itself, it — how shall we say it? — it “found” the 750 billion.

Continue reading We’d find the money